> On 9/28/05, Dmitry S. Baikov <c0ff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Hello! >> >> Another set of questions for experienced Linux Audio Users. >> Mainly it's related to laptop performace. >> It seems the choice of video system for modern laptop consists of two >> main alternatives: >> 1) dedicated high performance controller (nvidia/ati) with closed >> source drivers >> 2) shared memory controller (intel) with open source drivers >> >> People on Windows forums (no choice for Apples) prefer dedicated >> controller (with own video memory) because shared memory video >> degrades performance and increase latencies (they say, and in >> windows). >> I suppose, under Linux the things are different, because minimal >> possible latency is directly related to interrupt processing: closed >> source drivers have arbitrary interrupt paths, surely are written to >> maximise video performance and thus, should play a bad role in >> latency. Moreover they cannot be fixed. Open source ones at least can >> be fixed. >> >> Or I am completely wrong and shared video memory makes it bad on a >> hardware side (locking pci bus, for example)? > > Shared memory is not the highest performance alternative in any > operating system. When the video memory is part of system memory then > the processor the video controller fight for memory bandwidth. This > slows both down. > >> >> So, the question is: what to choose, integrated intel solution or >> ati/nvidia one (in this case, nvidia is preferred, because of driver >> quality). >> > > Choose a good controller with a bit of dedicated video memory. For > purely audio apps you don't need all that much, but if you're going to > run video apps or do multimedia stuff then you'll want more. > > HTH, > Mark Mr. Knecht! Nice to see you on LAU! :) R~
